Taking aim at the Republican administration of George W. Bush, American satirist Stephen Colbert popularized the term “truthiness,” mocking policies and decisions based entirely on gut feelings, emotions and wishful thinking about what decision-makers wanted to be true, rather than relying on facts and evidence.

Recent trends in Canadian federal politics indicate that the scourge of truthiness is not only sneaking across the border, but is actively being encouraged to take root by the current government.

When I grade papers, my students often make bold assertions about a given topic. Sometimes I agree with the opinions expressed, sometimes I do not. But in every case, I ask, “What sources can you cite to support this opinion?” It is the mark of a good essay when a student can defend a position with evidence and cite credible authorities. So too should it be in a robust democracy.

Not only should our governments be expected to base their policies on a solid foundation of evidence and expertise, they should be willing to encourage others to examine these decisions using quality sources. A democratic system functions best when it is open to healthy critique and when all citizens are able to engage in a process of constructive dialogue.

Unfortunately, the past five years have witnessed a series of decisions designed to restrict access to quality information and limit the ability of individuals to interact with, let alone critique, our government. In 2006, the Conservative government cancelled the Court Challenges Program, a federal program that helped groups and individuals afford the steep legal costs associated with challenges to policies and laws which may have been in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The program acted as a levelling mechanism so that individuals and groups would not be deterred from ensuring that their Charter rights were protected. Without this program, only the wealthy can easily pursue such legal action, making it much easier for governments to run roughshod over Charter rights.

Even more troubling was the sudden decision last summer to cancel the mandatory long-form census. The data collected by Statistics Canada through the long-form census has long been essential to the formulation of public policy and for academic research. Policy decisions about housing, urban planning, immigrant integration, educational services and a host of other sectors rely on this data.

The mandatory nature of the census made it substantially more likely to be completed by a representative cross-section of the population, creating data that policy-makers and policy critics alike could rely upon.

To replace the mandatory long-form census, we have been left with a voluntary survey and the suggestion that non-profit organizations and academics should pay to collect their own data. We did pay for it in the past, through our taxes, which minimized the intrusiveness of the process and maximized its quality by having Statistics Canada collect this data all at once.

If this ill-informed decision, which was criticized by the head of Statistics Canada, is maintained, Canada will be left in a situation where only wealthy think-tanks can afford to conduct extensive polls, and where many will rightly question the impartiality of their research methods.

These decisions are part of a much larger trend by the current government that includes the silencing of researchers working for the government, the control of information flow from the bureaucracy, and even the vetting of statements by Conservative MPs, which all contributes to a political culture that stifles intelligent critique and allows policies based on truthiness to pass unchallenged.

This is already evident in the current crime and prison-construction agenda of the Conservative government – an agenda based on assertions about unreported crime and unsafe streets, despite extensive evidence suggesting that Canadian crime rates have been on a steady decline for over a decade.

Canadians deserve better than this from their policy-makers. They deserve to have a government base its policies on expertise and evidence, rather than ideology and unsupported assumptions. This requires giving Canadians and their policy-makers the tools to build well-founded public policies, and allowing them to engage in a process of constructive criticism. A legitimate government welcomes input and critique of its policies because it knows them to be well-founded. It does not try to shut down dialogue and silence its critics, as has been the policy of the past five years.

Matthew Hayday is a professor of Canadian political history at the University of Guelph and blogger at Pample the Moose.

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